Guest Author - Michelle McVaney
Want to create a scrapbook of your own? It's easy. Just follow the steps in this article to get your started on your own scrapbooking journey.
I have helped many begginers start their scrapbooking journey. The one thing that I always reccomend is starting with a theme. Not a really important theme like a wedding though, because that is an album that you will probably want to create once you have practiced a little and have developed your style of scrapbooking.
A great theme to start with is a vacation. I always keep a vacation album because I take way to many photos on vacations to fit them all into our yearly family album! Typically I end up with a mini album for each vacation!
Once you have decided your theme. It is time to get your pictures out and organize them. Do you have tons of photos? If so, you might need to do a larger size album. If you have fewer pictures you could do a smaller album like an 8x8 or 6x6. Typically you can only fit 2 pictures per page in an 8x8 and one per page in a 6x6.
Next, you need to choose the look of your album. Sometimes it is easier to choose a particular product line with paper, stickers, etc to help you with your overall design. Sometimes it is just easy to just go with a particular color scheme so you can have a little more freedom in your design. I do think it is a good idea for a beginner to have a particular product line because it takes the extra job of trying to cooridnate patterns, and products while you are trying to get the basics of scrapbooking under your belt with this first album!
I like to have a 12x12 box to store all of the materials for a project. This way you can put everything that has to do with this album all in one place. When the time comes to scrapbook, you will have everything you need at your fingertips for this project.
Start with a title page for your album. I like to include memoribilia from our trip like a postcard or something like that on my title page. If you would like, you can also add a table of contents to the front of your album.
Then just start creating your pages. I typically set my travel album up chronoligically starting with leaving for the trip and then ending with the last day of the trip. Whatever you do, make sure you leave room to journal. The journaling is one of the most important parts of your album, without the journaling it is just a fancy picture book.
